Extract from chapter 24
1842-1850: Henry Austen
Learn how Henry Austen passed his final years in Tunbridge Wells.
Image: Henry Austen (public domain)
After spending three years in Colchester, Henry and Eleanor moved to their final home in Tunbridge Wells in 1842.
Henry was seventy-three when Cassandra died, and old age made him sentimental. He grew reflective of the past, and memories from his childhood became more prominent.
He and Eleanor now lived at Little Grove House in Tunbridge Wells, which was near to the town of Sevenoaks, where Henry remembered visiting with his parents when he was a boy.
He wrote to Caroline and James Edward with his fond memories of the old relations that used to live there, and Caroline was inspired to travel to Tunbridge in person to write down her Uncle Henry’s recollections before the family history was lost. Henry told her about Edward Austen’s adoption by the Knights, and how the young son of Warren Hastings had once lived in Deane with his parents and died there when he was in their care.
Image: Caroline Austen (Ancestry.com)
Image: James Edward Austen Leigh (public domain)
In the spring of 1848, Henry paid his last visit to Godmersham. Eleanor did not go with him, as she was too frail to travel, but Henry was able to catch up with his brother, Edward, now eighty years old. Henry found him to be ‘aged, but well.’
Photo: Godmersham Park, Kent
Photo: Bathing Machine, Weymouth
In October of 1848, Henry and Eleanor went to Eastbourne for sea bathing. Neither of them was in the best of health, so they joined the rest of the invalid population in the hope of finding a cure.
On March 12th, 1850, Henry Austen died at home in Tunbridge Wells. He had suffered from abdominal complaints for years, and died of gastritis, aged seventy-nine.
James Edward attended his funeral, where he was buried in Woodbury Park Cemetery, and his headstone remains there today.
Despite her own ailments, Eleanor lived for another fourteen years as his widow.
Photo: Henry Austen's grave, Woodbury Park Cemetery, Tunbridge Wells.
Copyright: Diane Jane Ball, 2026.